Field
Aspects of the present disclosure relate generally to telecommunication systems, and more particularly, to multimedia streaming systems utilizing multiple description coding.
Background
Multimedia content can be provided in an end-to-end system. Currently, many such end-to-end systems include a rate adaptation feature, wherein a single description of the multimedia is transmitted from a content source to a destination over a single path. In a system utilizing multiple description coding (MDC), wherein multimedia content is divided into a plurality of descriptions for delivery from a source to an aggregator, the descriptions can be provided over multiple paths. In this way, the system can have increased robustness, where the content might be recovered despite one or more of the descriptions being lost. Further, overhead over any one of the paths is reduced relative to other systems that only utilize a single path, since the descriptions may include lower resolution versions of the content, or only certain portions of the content.
However, when a mobile device is utilized as a streaming content server, channel conditions can vary greatly over time. This can result in time-dependent capabilities of a channel to carry the streaming content. Therefore, there remains a desire in the art for improved multimedia streaming capabilities for mobile content servers.